Jumbo Package: Pete Golding gets substantial raise, extension

Happy Tuesday, everyone. We now have some details on Alabama’s new coaching contracts.

Defensive coordinator Pete Golding saw a bump in pay from $1.225 million to $1.5 million, and that salary will increase over the course of his contract (through 2024) to $1.7 million in its final year. Last season, the Crimson Tide’s defense ranked first in the SEC in scoring defense (19.4 points per game) and third in rushing defense, passing defense and total defense.

On offense, Bill O’Brien was added as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach and will earn $1.1 million over the course of his two-year contract (through 2023). Now the head coach at Texas, Steve Sarkisian ended his time at Alabama with a $2.5 million salary. In addition to O’Brien, UA approved contracts for Doug Marrone, Robert Gillespie and Jay Valai.

Golding got a pretty handsome raise for a guy who has been fired at least 3,000 times by the RBR commentariat alone. O’Brien making $1.4 million less than Sark effectively paid for Golding’s raise as well as Nate Oats’.

With Jay Graham’s departure, Saban has one coaching slot to fill and it appears that he has found his man.

Svoboda is a former Texas high school coach who won 93 games in 10 years at Klein Collins High School in Houston before making the move to the college level in 2018 with Rice. He was hired at Memphis in January.

His resume is a short one at the college level, but Saban must see something he likes.

Saban spoke with reporters ahead of today’s second Pro Day event in Tuscaloosa.

“I don’t know if he had a torn meniscus,” Saban said. “You can talk to the doctor about that. I know he had issues with his knee. We drained his knee a few times. Dr. Cain made all the decisions about how we should manage him through the season. Dylan was very aware of it and I do think it affected his performance a little bit.”

Moses had a season-high 13 tackles against Ole Miss and 10 the following week in the win over Georgia. Earlier in Monday’s interview, Moses said he played the majority of the season with the injury but didn’t know what it was until the year was over.

“Once I got done with the season,” he said, “I was able to get my MRI and get it checked out and get it fixed.”

On criticism over DeVonta Smith’s size...

“I think his performance speaks for itself. And I’ll be honest with you, when we recruited DeVonta Smith, he weighed 159 pounds. I wished he was bigger. And now he weighs 170 pounds, and I think people at the next level are probably saying, ‘I wish he was bigger,’ aight. But saying all that to say this, there are bigger people who don’t perform anywhere near how he performs. There are people that are bigger than him that don’t have the competitive spirit that he has, nor the competitive toughness. I mean, tell how many receivers are tougher than he is, that block better, that play more physical than he does. So I think maybe there’s a time when you say this guy really overcomes the fact that he’s not the biggest guy in the world and he really plays this game really, really well. And I don’t think anybody could argue that fact.”

Dylan having the knee drained multiple times to stay on the field is concerning. Hopefully that thing doesn’t become a chronic problem for him.

The 49ers traded up with Miami to grab the third pick of the draft, and are interestingly passing up Justin Fields’ Pro Day, which is also today, in favor of Mac Jones.

I say this to say: What can the 49ers learn from watching Fields throw in shorts against air that they couldn’t learn in watching two years of tape at Ohio State?

From that perspective, there’s probably more for Lynch and Shanahan to learn from watching Jones (who only started one full season at Alabama) throw live than there is in watching Fields.

Decent insight here. There is another year of Fields on tape, and since he ran around more in their offense NFL teams have a pretty good idea of his athleticism. Mac will be tested by teams in that area.

Last, Urban swears he won’t be quitting on Jax, y’all.

“What coach Saban went through, I don’t know. That’s coach Saban’s business. I’m not quite sure. At some point, I might talk to him about it . ... He’s a friend of mine, and I got great respect for him. It is different. It’s completely different. My mind is set. There’s gonna be some losses. ... That’s gonna be miserable. I hate losing. We all do. But the reality is that you’re gonna lose. Hopefully you win more than you lose. But that’s something that’s gonna be new to me. I have to get my mind right and I’m working on that.”

Still, Meyer’s college stints have been hampered by health issues, both at Ohio State and Florida. He doesn’t believe it will be an issue moving forward with the Jaguars.

I figure his health problems will come back about year two, when he is sitting at 2-6 following a 3-13 debut season.

That’s about it for now. Have a great day.

Roll Tide.